Op-Ed: Iran, the Story of Our Future War

“The stage is set, the actors are in their places, and the orchestra strikes up the prelude: all that remains is for the curtain to rise on Act One of ‘World War III in the Middle East,’” writes Justin Raimondo.

We have seen it coming for years—war with Iran.

After the Bush administration’s invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, the American population elected Barack Obama in the hope of bringing to our world a little more stability. Yet the current administration’s actions have done nothing but continue the disastrous foreign policies of its predecessor, adding a few military aggressions of its own into the mix. Obama’s attempted extension of the troop withdrawal deadline in Iraq is just the first point in a long list of international relation failures that have occurred this term. (We’ll discuss the Obama administration’s role in Pakistan, Yemen, Libya, Uganda, and Somalia in a future column.)

It is clear this Nobel Peace Prize laureate has no qualms about entering a foreign country sans invitation, and, with the possible exception of Syria, Iran is next.

The buildup is complex and confusing, comprised of almost unnoticeable steps that have now turned into a completed stairway leading us into battle. Relations between the US and Iran go back to the Iran-Iraq War, but recent tensions are fought with a strange passive-aggressiveness, notably through economic sanctions on key financial institutions and itemized exports.

This took a turn for the worst when we discovered that one of the US military’s surveillance drones fell into the hands of Iranian officials after it traveled 155 miles into the country’s airspace. Popular opinion seemed to believe that Iran’s decision to keep the drone was an act of aggression, but few questioned why the US government was flying over Iran in the first place.

Mysterious surveillance programs coupled with the relocation of American troops into the Persian Gulf is leading many of us to believe that the US government is waging a covert war against Iran. The apparent assassinations of Iranian scientists do nothing to suppress this intuition, especially at a time when presidential candidates are basing their campaigns on ideas paralleling these recent events.

A few weeks after the falling drone incident, the Iranian government began to outline key steps in potentially closing the Strait of Hormuz, a method of retaliation that the country’s navy chief Admiral Habibollah Sayari described as “easier than drinking a glass of water.”

His confident attitude makes Iran appear as a strong and unrelenting enemy in the international sphere. Truth be told, they aren’t that sophisticated.

The Pentagon admits that Iran is primarily concerned with deterring an attack rather than doing the attacking. The US government’s nuclear weapon force is so astoundingly huge that it doesn’t make one single ounce of sense to insist that Iran would even consider shooting a nuclear missile at the United States (or at Israel for that matter).

As Noam Chomsky once explained, “The reports make it very clear that, whatever the Iranian threat is, it’s not military. […] Iran’s military doctrine is strictly defensive, designed to slow an invasion and to force a diplomatic solution to hostilities. Iran has only limited capacity to project force beyond its borders.” Even Mossad chief Tamir Pardo stated last year that a nuclear Iran isn’t necessarily an existential threat to Israel.

Really, think about West Bank’s proximity to Israel. How do you think an accidental death count of innocent Palestinian citizens would benefit Iran’s future? In fact, it seems like the only people who view Iran as a threat are politicians and the mainstream media.

No reasonable person—especially no reasonable person with a son, daughter, or friend to lose in worthless military engagements—really believes that Iran’s infantile military can touch the United States. In Watchmen, when Dr. Manhattan says, “The world’s smartest man poses no more threat to me than does its smartest termite,” I think about Iran.

The Iranians are a third-world nation. They don’t have an army or a navy of any sort. They don’t have inter-continental ballistic missiles. [A] country that has all that oil in their country—and they can’t even produce enough gasoline and they have to depend on importing gasoline—and we’re supposed to build up war fever and go to war over this? I don’t think for a minute that, if they got those weapons, they would dare think about attacking Israel. Israel would take care of them, especially if they had no restraints from us. They would take care of them in minutes. It’s not going to happen. It’s all war propaganda.

We will regret a military engagement against Iran. Let us only pray that future generations are not the product of war hysteria.

If they are, indeed, here is the story of how it began.

This opinion article was written by an independent writer. The opinions and views expressed herein are those of the author and are not necessarily intended to reflect those of DigitalJournal.com